Accessibility Links

Revenge is sweet when it’s just filling in a box

Libby Purves

A change to the divorce form that gives space for details of your spouse’s bit on the side may prove too tempting to resist

The Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery! But people do, all the time, and modern western culture overtly accepts it. You struggle to find a novel, film, television drama or soap opera where the Seventh isn’t broken, often not even as the engine of the plot. A royal heir and his wife both admitted it on TV without the sky falling in; for celebrities, lifelong fidelity is regarded as almost freakish; and as for MPs, best to draw a veil.

So, the common acceptance is that the vow “forsaking all other” will be broken quite often, by people otherwise respected. It was summed up in a vox pop during Bill Clinton’s travails, when a good ol’ boy in the president’s hometown drawled dismissively to…